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Ideas for 'talk', 'My Philosophical Development' and 'Rule Utilitarianism and Euthanasia'

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2 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 1. Logical Form

7528	Leibniz bases everything on subject/predicate and substance/property propositions [Russell]
	Full Idea: The metaphysics of Leibniz was explicitly based upon the doctrine that every proposition attributes a predicate to a subject and (what seemed to him almost the same thing) that every fact consists of a substance having a property.
	From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.5)
	A reaction: I think it is realised now that although predicates tend to attribute properties to things, they are far from being the same thing. See Idea 4587, for example. Russell gives us an interesting foot in the door of Leibniz's complex system.

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / e. Empty names

6439	Names are meaningless unless there is an object which they designate [Russell]
	Full Idea: Unlike descriptions, names are meaningless unless there is an object which they designate.
	From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.14)
	A reaction: This interests Russell because of its ontological implications. If we reduce language to names, we can have a pure ontology of 'objects'. We need a system for saying whether a description names something - which is his theory of definite descriptions.